“Nor widows' tears, nor tender orphans' cries
Can stop th' invader's force;
Nor swelling seas, nor threatening skies,
Prevent the pirate's course:
Their lives to selfish ends decreed
Through blood and rapine they proceed;
No anxious thoughts of ill repute,
Suspend the impetuous and unjust pursuit;
But power and wealth obtain'd, guilty and great,
Their fellow creatures' fears they raise, or urge their hate.”
Congreve, “Pindaric Ode,” ii.
By this time Deerslayer had been twenty minutes in the canoe, and he
began to grow a little impatient for some signs of relief from his
friends. The position of the boat still prevented his seeing in any
direction, unless it were up or down the lake, and, though he knew that
his line of sight must pass within a hundred yards of the castle, it,
in fact, passed that distance to the westward of the buildings. The
profound stillness troubled him also, for he knew not whether to ascribe
it to the increasing space between him and the Indians, or to some new
artifice. At length, wearied with fruitless watchfulness, the young man
turned himself on his back, closed his eyes, and awaited the result
in determined acquiescence. If the savages could so completely control
their thirst for revenge, he was resolved to be as calm as themselves,
and to trust his fate to the interposition of the currents and air.
Some additional ten minutes may have passed in this quiescent manner, on
both sides, when Deerslayer thought he heard a slight noise, like a low
rubbing against the bottom of his canoe. He opened his eyes of course,
in expectation of seeing the face or arm of an Indian rising from the
water, and found that a canopy of leaves was impending directly over
his head. Starting to his feet, the first object that met his eye was
Rivenoak, who had so far aided the slow progress of the boat, as to
draw it on the point, the grating on the strand being the sound that had
first given our hero the alarm. The change in the drift of the canoe had
been altogether owing to the baffling nature of the light currents of
the air, aided by some eddies in the water.
“Come,” said the Huron with a quiet gesture of authority, to order his
prisoner to land, “my young friend has sailed about till he is tired; he
will forget how to run again, unless he uses his legs.”
“You've the best of it, Huron,” returned Deerslayer, stepping steadily
from the canoe, and passively following his leader to the open area of
the point; “Providence has helped you in an onexpected manner. I'm your
prisoner ag'in, and I hope you'll allow that I'm as good at breaking
gaol, as I am at keeping furloughs.”
“My young friend is a Moose!” exclaimed the Huron. “His legs are very
long; they have given my young men trouble. But he is not a fish; he
cannot find his way in the lake. We did not shoot him; fish are taken
in nets, and not killed by bullets. When he turns Moose again he will be
treated like a Moose.”
“Ay, have your talk, Rivenoak; make the most of your advantage. 'Tis
your right, I suppose, and I know it is your gift. On that p'int
there'll be no words atween us, for all men must and ought to follow
their gifts. Howsever, when your women begin to ta'nt and abuse me, as I
suppose will soon happen, let 'em remember that if a pale-face struggles
for life so long as it's lawful and manful, he knows how to loosen his
hold on it, decently, when he feels that the time has come. I'm your
captyve; work your will on me.”
“My brother has had a long run on the hills, and a pleasant sail on the
water,” returned Rivenoak more mildly, smiling, at the same time, in a
way that his listener knew denoted pacific intentions. “He has seen the
woods; he has seen the water. Which does he like best? Perhaps he has
seen enough to change his mind, and make him hear reason.”
“Speak out, Huron. Something is in your thoughts, and the sooner it is
said, the sooner you'll get my answer.”
“That is straight! There is no turning in the talk of my pale-face
friend, though he is a fox in running. I will speak to him; his ears
are now open wider than before, and his eyes are not shut. The Sumach
is poorer than ever. Once she had a brother and a husband. She had
children, too. The time came and the husband started for the Happy
Hunting Grounds, without saying farewell; he left her alone with his
children. This he could not help, or he would not have done it; le Loup
Cervier was a good husband. It was pleasant to see the venison, and wild
ducks, and geese, and bear's meat, that hung in his lodge in winter. It
is now gone; it will not keep in warm weather. Who shall bring it back
again? Some thought the brother would not forget his sister, and that,
next winter, he would see that the lodge should not be empty. We thought
this; but the Panther yelled, and followed the husband on the path of
death. They are now trying which shall first reach the Happy Hunting
Grounds. Some think the Lynx can run fastest, and some think the Panther
can jump the farthest. The Sumach thinks both will travel so fast and so
far that neither will ever come back. Who shall feed her and her young?
The man who told her husband and her brother to quit her lodge, that
there might be room for him to come into it. He is a great hunter, and
we know that the woman will never want.”
“Ay, Huron this is soon settled, accordin' to your notions, but it goes
sorely ag'in the grain of a white man's feelin's. I've heard of men's
saving their lives this-a-way, and I've know'd them that would prefar
death to such a sort of captivity. For my part, I do not seek my end,
nor do I seek matrimony.”
“The pale-face will think of this, while my people get ready for the
council. He will be told what will happen. Let him remember how hard it
is to lose a husband and a brother. Go; when we want him, the name of
Deerslayer will be called.”
This conversation had been held with no one near but the speakers. Of
all the band that had so lately thronged the place, Rivenoak alone was
visible. The rest seemed to have totally abandoned the spot. Even the
furniture, clothes, arms, and other property of the camp had entirely
disappeared, and the place bore no other proofs of the crowd that had so
lately occupied it, than the traces of their fires and resting places,
and the trodden earth that still showed the marks of their feet. So
sudden and unexpected a change caused Deerslayer a good deal of surprise
and some uneasiness, for he had never known it to occur, in the course
of his experience among the Delawares. He suspected, however, and
rightly, that a change of encampment was intended, and that the mystery
of the movement was resorted to in order to work on his apprehensions.
Rivenoak walked up the vista of trees as soon as he ceased speaking,
leaving Deerslayer by himself. The chief disappeared behind the covers
of the forest, and one unpractised in such scenes might have believed
the prisoner left to the dictates of his own judgment. But the young
man, while he felt a little amazement at the dramatic aspect of things,
knew his enemies too well to fancy himself at liberty, or a free
agent. Still, he was ignorant how far the Hurons meant to carry
their artifices, and he determined to bring the question, as soon as
practicable, to the proof. Affecting an indifference he was far from
feeling, he strolled about the area, gradually getting nearer and nearer
to the spot where he had landed, when he suddenly quickened his pace,
though carefully avoiding all appearance of flight, and pushing aside
the bushes, he stepped upon the beach. The canoe was gone, nor could he
see any traces of it, after walking to the northern and southern verges
of the point, and examining the shores in both directions. It
was evidently removed beyond his reach and knowledge, and under
circumstances to show that such had been the intention of the savages.
Deerslayer now better understood his actual situation. He was a prisoner
on the narrow tongue of land, vigilantly watched beyond a question, and
with no other means of escape than that of swimming. He, again, thought
of this last expedient, but the certainty that the canoe would be sent
in chase, and the desperate nature of the chances of success deterred
him from the undertaking. While on the strand, he came to a spot where
the bushes had been cut, and thrust into a small pile. Removing a few of
the upper branches, he found beneath them the dead body of the Panther.
He knew that it was kept until the savages might find a place to inter
it, where it would be beyond the reach of the scalping knife. He gazed
wistfully towards the castle, but there all seemed to be silent and
desolate, and a feeling of loneliness and desertion came over him to
increase the gloom of the moment.
“God's will be done!” murmured the young man, as he walked sorrowfully
away from the beach, entering again beneath the arches of the wood.
“God's will be done, on 'arth as it is in heaven! I did hope that my
days would not be numbered so soon, but it matters little a'ter all. A
few more winters, and a few more summers, and 'twould have been over,
accordin' to natur'. Ah's! me, the young and actyve seldom think death
possible, till he grins in their faces, and tells 'em the hour is come!”
While this soliloquy was being pronounced, the hunter advanced into the
area, where to his surprise he saw Hetty alone, evidently awaiting his
return. The girl carried the Bible under her arm, and her face, over
which a shadow of gentle melancholy was usually thrown, now seemed sad
and downcast. Moving nearer, Deerslayer spoke.
“Poor Hetty,” he said, “times have been so troublesome, of late, that
I'd altogether forgotten you; we meet, as it might be to mourn over what
is to happen. I wonder what has become of Chingachgook and Wah!”
“Why did you kill the Huron, Deerslayer?--” returned the girl
reproachfully. “Don't you know your commandments, which say 'Thou shalt
not kill!' They tell me you have now slain the woman's husband and
brother!”
“It's true, my good Hetty--'tis gospel truth, and I'll not deny what has
come to pass. But, you must remember, gal, that many things are lawful
in war, which would be onlawful in peace. The husband was shot in open
fight--or, open so far as I was consarned, while he had a better cover
than common--and the brother brought his end on himself, by casting his
tomahawk at an unarmed prisoner. Did you witness that deed, gal?”
“I saw it, and was sorry it happened, Deerslayer, for I hoped you
wouldn't have returned blow for blow, but good for evil.”
“Ah, Hetty, that may do among the Missionaries, but 'twould make an
onsartain life in the woods! The Panther craved my blood, and he was
foolish enough to throw arms into my hands, at the very moment he was
striving a'ter it. 'Twould have been ag'in natur' not to raise a hand in
such a trial, and 'twould have done discredit to my training and gifts.
No--no--I'm as willing to give every man his own as another, and so I
hope you'll testify to them that will be likely to question you as to
what you've seen this day.”
“Deerslayer, do you mean to marry Sumach, now she has neither husband
nor brother to feed her?”
“Are such your idees of matrimony, Hetty! Ought the young to wive
with the old--the pale-face with the red-skin--the Christian with the
heathen? It's ag'in reason and natur', and so you'll see, if you think
of it a moment.”
“I've always heard mother say,” returned Hetty, averting her face more
from a feminine instinct than from any consciousness of wrong, “that
people should never marry until they loved each other better than
brothers and sisters, and I suppose that is what you mean. Sumach is
old, and you are young!”
“Ay and she's red, and I'm white. Beside, Hetty, suppose you was a wife,
now, having married some young man of your own years, and state, and
colour--Hurry Harry, for instance--” Deerslayer selected this example
simply from the circumstance that he was the only young man known to
both--“and that he had fallen on a war path, would you wish to take to
your bosom, for a husband, the man that slew him?”
“Oh! no, no, no--” returned the girl shuddering--“That would be wicked
as well as heartless! No Christian girl could, or would do that! I never
shall be the wife of Hurry, I know, but were he my husband no man should
ever be it, again, after his death!”
“I thought it would get to this, Hetty, when you come to understand
sarcumstances. 'Tis a moral impossibility that I should ever marry
Sumach, and, though Injin weddin's have no priests and not much
religion, a white man who knows his gifts and duties can't profit by
that, and so make his escape at the fitting time. I do think death would
be more nat'ral like, and welcome, than wedlock with this woman.”
“Don't say it too loud,” interrupted Hetty impatiently; “I suppose she
will not like to hear it. I'm sure Hurry would rather marry even me than
suffer torments, though I am feeble minded; and I am sure it would kill
me to think he'd prefer death to being my husband.”
“Ay, gal, you ain't Sumach, but a comely young Christian, with a good
heart, pleasant smile, and kind eye. Hurry might be proud to get you,
and that, too, not in misery and sorrow, but in his best and happiest
days. Howsever, take my advice, and never talk to Hurry about these
things; he's only a borderer, at the best.”
“I wouldn't tell him, for the world!” exclaimed the girl, looking about
her like one affrighted, and blushing, she knew not why. “Mother always
said young women shouldn't be forward, and speak their minds before
they're asked; Oh! I never forget what mother told me. 'Tis a pity Hurry
is so handsome, Deerslayer; I do think fewer girls would like him then,
and he would sooner know his own mind.”
“Poor gal, poor gal, it's plain enough how it is, but the Lord will bear
in mind one of your simple heart and kind feelin's! We'll talk no more
of these things; if you had reason, you'd be sorrowful at having let
others so much into your secret. Tell me, Hetty, what has become of all
the Hurons, and why they let you roam about the p'int as if you, too,
was a prisoner?”
“I'm no prisoner, Deerslayer, but a free girl, and go when and where I
please. Nobody dare hurt me! If they did, God would be angry, as I can
show them in the Bible. No--no--Hetty Hutter is not afraid; she's in
good hands. The Hurons are up yonder in the woods, and keep a good watch
on us both, I'll answer for it, since all the women and children are on
the look-out. Some are burying the body of the poor girl who was shot,
so that the enemy and the wild beasts can't find it. I told 'em that
father and mother lay in the lake, but I wouldn't let them know in what
part of it, for Judith and I don't want any of their heathenish company
in our burying ground.”
“Ahs! me; Well, it is an awful despatch to be standing here, alive and
angry, and with the feelin's up and ferocious, one hour, and then to be
carried away at the next, and put out of sight of mankind in a hole in
the 'arth! No one knows what will happen to him on a warpath, that's
sartain.”
Here the stirring of leaves and the cracking of dried twigs interrupted
the discourse, and apprised Deerslayer of the approach of his enemies.
The Hurons closed around the spot that had been prepared for the coming
scene, and in the centre of which the intended victim now stood, in a
circle, the armed men being so distributed among the feebler members
of the band, that there was no safe opening through which the prisoner
could break. But the latter no longer contemplated flight, the recent
trial having satisfied him of his inability to escape when pursued so
closely by numbers. On the contrary, all his energies were aroused in
order to meet his expected fate, with a calmness that should do credit
to his colour and his manhood; one equally removed from recreant alarm,
and savage boasting.
When Rivenoak re-appeared in the circle, he occupied his old place at
the head of the area. Several of the elder warriors stood near him,
but, now that the brother of Sumach had fallen, there was no longer
any recognised chief present whose influence and authority offered a
dangerous rivalry to his own. Nevertheless, it is well known that little
which could be called monarchical or despotic entered into the politics
of the North American tribes, although the first colonists, bringing
with them to this hemisphere the notions and opinions of their own
countries, often dignified the chief men of those primitive nations
with the titles of kings and princes. Hereditary influence did certainly
exist, but there is much reason to believe it existed rather as a
consequence of hereditary merit and acquired qualifications, than as a
birthright. Rivenoak, however, had not even this claim, having risen to
consideration purely by the force of talents, sagacity, and, as Bacon
expresses it in relation to all distinguished statesmen, “by a union of
great and mean qualities;” a truth of which the career of the profound
Englishman himself furnishes so apt an illustration. Next to arms,
eloquence offers the great avenue to popular favor, whether it be in
civilized or savage life, and Rivenoak had succeeded, as so many have
succeeded before him, quite as much by rendering fallacies acceptable
to his listeners, as by any profound or learned expositions of truth, or
the accuracy of his logic. Nevertheless, he had influence; and was far
from being altogether without just claims to its possession. Like most
men who reason more than they feel, the Huron was not addicted to the
indulgence of the more ferocious passions of his people: he had been
commonly found on the side of mercy, in all the scenes of vindictive
torture and revenge that had occurred in his tribe since his own
attainment to power. On the present occasion, he was reluctant to
proceed to extremities, although the provocation was so great. Still
it exceeded his ingenuity to see how that alternative could well be
avoided. Sumach resented her rejection more than she did the deaths of
her husband and brother, and there was little probability that the
woman would pardon a man who had so unequivocally preferred death to
her embraces. Without her forgiveness, there was scarce a hope that
the tribe could be induced to overlook its loss, and even to Rivenoak,
himself, much as he was disposed to pardon, the fate of our hero now
appeared to be almost hopelessly sealed.
When the whole band was arrayed around the captive, a grave silence, so
much the more threatening from its profound quiet, pervaded the
place. Deerslayer perceived that the women and boys had been preparing
splinters of the fat pine roots, which he well knew were to be stuck
into his flesh, and set in flames, while two or three of the young men
held the thongs of bark with which he was to be bound. The smoke of a
distant fire announced that the burning brands were in preparation, and
several of the elder warriors passed their fingers over the edges of
their tomahawks, as if to prove their keenness and temper. Even the
knives seemed loosened in their sheathes, impatient for the bloody and
merciless work to begin.
“Killer of the Deer,” recommenced Rivenoak, certainly without any signs
of sympathy or pity in his manner, though with calmness and dignity,
“Killer of the Deer, it is time that my people knew their minds. The
sun is no longer over our heads; tired of waiting on the Hurons, he
has begun to fall near the pines on this side of the valley. He is
travelling fast towards the country of our French fathers; it is to warn
his children that their lodges are empty, and that they ought to be at
home. The roaming wolf has his den, and he goes to it when he wishes to
see his young. The Iroquois are not poorer than the wolves. They have
villages, and wigwams, and fields of corn; the Good Spirits will be
tired of watching them alone. My people must go back and see to their
own business. There will be joy in the lodges when they hear our whoop
from the forest! It will be a sorrowful whoop; when it is understood,
grief will come after it. There will be one scalp-whoop, but there
will be only one. We have the fur of the Muskrat; his body is among the
fishes. Deerslayer must say whether another scalp shall be on our pole.
Two lodges are empty; a scalp, living or dead, is wanted at each door.”
“Then take 'em dead, Huron,” firmly, but altogether without dramatic
boasting, returned the captive. “My hour is come, I do suppose, and what
must be, must. If you are bent on the tortur', I'll do my indivours to
bear up ag'in it, though no man can say how far his natur' will stand
pain, until he's been tried.”
“The pale-face cur begins to put his tail between his legs!” cried
a young and garrulous savage, who bore the appropriate title of the
Corbeau Rouge; a sobriquet he had gained from the French by his facility
in making unseasonable noises, and an undue tendency to hear his own
voice; “he is no warrior; he has killed the Loup Cervier when looking
behind him not to see the flash of his own rifle. He grunts like a hog,
already; when the Huron women begin to torment him, he will cry like the
young of the catamount. He is a Delaware woman, dressed in the skin of a
Yengeese!”
“Have your say, young man; have your say,” returned Deerslayer, unmoved;
“you know no better, and I can overlook it. Talking may aggravate
women, but can hardly make knives sharper, fire hotter, or rifles more
sartain.”
Rivenoak now interposed, reproving the Red Crow for his premature
interference, and then directing the proper persons to bind the captive.
This expedient was adopted, not from any apprehensions that he would
escape, or from any necessity that was yet apparent of his being unable
to endure the torture with his limbs free, but from an ingenious design
of making him feel his helplessness, and of gradually sapping his
resolution by undermining it, as it might be, little by little.
Deerslayer offered no resistance. He submitted his arms and legs, freely
if not cheerfully, to the ligaments of bark, which were bound around
them by order of the chief, in a way to produce as little pain as
possible. These directions were secret, and given in the hope that the
captive would finally save himself from any serious bodily suffering
by consenting to take the Sumach for a wife. As soon as the body of
Deerslayer was withed in bark sufficiently to create a lively sense
of helplessness, he was literally carried to a young tree, and bound
against it in a way that effectually prevented him from moving, as well
as from falling. The hands were laid flat against the legs, and thongs
were passed over all, in a way nearly to incorporate the prisoner with
the tree. His cap was then removed, and he was left half-standing,
half-sustained by his bonds, to face the coming scene in the best manner
he could.
Previously to proceeding to any thing like extremities, it was the wish
of Rivenoak to put his captive's resolution to the proof by renewing the
attempt at a compromise. This could be effected only in one manner, the
acquiescence of the Sumach being indispensably necessary to a compromise
of her right to be revenged. With this view, then, the woman was next
desired to advance, and to look to her own interests; no agent being
considered as efficient as the principal, herself, in this negotiation.
The Indian females, when girls, are usually mild and submissive, with
musical tones, pleasant voices and merry laughs, but toil and suffering
generally deprive them of most of these advantages by the time they have
reached an age which the Sumach had long before passed. To render their
voices harsh, it would seem to require active, malignant, passions,
though, when excited, their screams can rise to a sufficiently
conspicuous degree of discordancy to assert their claim to possess
this distinctive peculiarity of the sex. The Sumach was not altogether
without feminine attraction, however, and had so recently been deemed
handsome in her tribe, as not to have yet learned the full influence
that time and exposure produce on man, as well as on woman. By an
arrangement of Rivenoak's, some of the women around her had been
employing the time in endeavoring to persuade the bereaved widow that
there was still a hope Deerslayer might be prevailed on to enter her
wigwam, in preference to entering the world of spirits, and this, too,
with a success that previous symptoms scarcely justified. All this was
the result of a resolution on the part of the chief to leave no proper
means unemployed, in order to get transferred to his own nation the
greatest hunter that was then thought to exist in all that region,
as well as a husband for a woman who he felt would be likely to be
troublesome, were any of her claims to the attention and care of the
tribe overlooked.
In conformity with this scheme, the Sumach had been secretly advised to
advance into the circle, and to make her appeal to the prisoner's sense
of justice, before the band had recourse to the last experiment. The
woman, nothing loth, consented, for there was some such attraction in
becoming the wife of a noted hunter, among the females of the tribes, as
is experienced by the sex, in more refined life, when they bestow their
hands on the affluent. As the duties of a mother were thought to be
paramount to all other considerations, the widow felt none of that
embarrassment, in preferring her claims, to which even a female fortune
hunter among ourselves might be liable. When she stood forth before the
whole party, therefore, the children that she led by the hands fully
justified all she did.
“You see me before you, cruel pale-face,” the woman commenced; “your
spirit must tell you my errand. I have found you; I cannot find le Loup
Cervier, nor the Panther; I have looked for them in the lake, in the
woods, in the clouds. I cannot say where they have gone.”
“No man knows, good Sumach, no man knows,” interposed the captive. “When
the spirit leaves the body, it passes into a world beyond our knowledge,
and the wisest way, for them that are left behind, is to hope for
the best. No doubt both your warriors have gone to the Happy Hunting
Grounds, and at the proper time you will see 'em ag'in, in their
improved state. The wife and sister of braves must have looked forward
to some such tarmination of their 'arthly careers.”
“Cruel pale-face, what had my warriors done that you should slay them!
They were the best hunters, and the boldest young men of their tribe;
the Great Spirit intended that they should live until they withered like
the branches of the hemlock, and fell of their own weight--”
“Nay--nay--good Sumach,” interrupted Deerslayer, whose love of truth was
too indomitable to listen to such hyperbole with patience, even though
it came from the torn breast of a widow--“Nay--nay, good Sumach, this is
a little outdoing red-skin privileges. Young man was neither, any more
than you can be called a young woman, and as to the Great Spirit's
intending that they should fall otherwise than they did, that's a
grievous mistake, inasmuch as what the Great Spirit intends is sartain
to come to pass. Then, agin, it's plain enough neither of your fri'nds
did me any harm; I raised my hand ag'in 'em on account of what they were
striving to do, rather than what they did. This is nat'ral law, 'to do
lest you should be done by.'”
“It is so. Sumach has but one tongue; she can tell but one story. The
pale face struck the Hurons lest the Hurons should strike him. The
Hurons are a just nation; they will forget it. The chiefs will shut
their eyes and pretend not to have seen it; the young men will believe
the Panther and the Lynx have gone to far off hunts, and the Sumach will
take her children by the hand, and go into the lodge of the pale-face
and say--'See; these are your children; they are also mine--feed us, and
we will live with you.'”
“The tarms are onadmissable, woman, and though I feel for your losses,
which must be hard to bear, the tarms cannot be accepted. As to givin'
you ven'son, in case we lived near enough together, that would be no
great expl'ite; but as for becomin' your husband, and the father of your
children, to be honest with you, I feel no callin' that-a-way.”
“Look at this boy, cruel pale-face; he has no father to teach him to
kill the deer, or to take scalps. See this girl; what young man will
come to look for a wife in a lodge that has no head? There are more
among my people in the Canadas, and the Killer of Deer will find as many
mouths to feed as his heart can wish for.”
“I tell you, woman,” exclaimed Deerslayer, whose imagination was far
from seconding the appeal of the widow, and who began to grow restive
under the vivid pictures she was drawing, “all this is nothing to me.
People and kindred must take care of their own fatherless, leaving them
that have no children to their own loneliness. As for me, I have no
offspring, and I want no wife. Now, go away Sumach; leave me in the
hands of your chiefs, for my colour, and gifts, and natur' itself cry
out ag'in the idee of taking you for a wife.”
It is unnecessary to expatiate on the effect of this downright refusal
of the woman's proposals. If there was anything like tenderness in her
bosom--and no woman was probably ever entirely without that feminine
quality--it all disappeared at this plain announcement. Fury, rage,
mortified pride, and a volcano of wrath burst out, at one explosion,
converting her into a sort of maniac, as it might beat the touch of a
magician's wand. Without deigning a reply in words, she made the arches
of the forest ring with screams, and then flew forward at her victim,
seizing him by the hair, which she appeared resolute to draw out by the
roots. It was some time before her grasp could be loosened. Fortunately
for the prisoner her rage was blind; since his total helplessness left
him entirely at her mercy. Had it been better directed it might have
proved fatal before any relief could have been offered. As it was, she
did succeed in wrenching out two or three handsful of hair, before the
young men could tear her away from her victim.
The insult that had been offered to the Sumach was deemed an insult to
the whole tribe; not so much, however, on account of any respect that
was felt for the woman, as on account of the honor of the Huron nation.
Sumach, herself, was generally considered to be as acid as the berry
from which she derived her name, and now that her great supporters, her
husband and brother, were both gone, few cared about concealing their
aversion. Nevertheless, it had become a point of honor to punish the
pale-face who disdained a Huron woman, and more particularly one who
coolly preferred death to relieving the tribe from the support of a
widow and her children. The young men showed an impatience to begin
to torture that Rivenoak understood, and, as his older associates
manifested no disposition to permit any longer delay, he was compelled
to give the signal for the infernal work to proceed.